[NBLUG/talk] personal server upgrade... strategy?

Troy Arnold troy at zenux.net
Sun Oct 9 16:02:13 PDT 2005


On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 10:51:33AM -0700, Daniel Smith wrote:
> 
> I have a debian 3.0 (woody) server at a colo that's due
> for an upgrade.  My motivation is more for "latest security"
> than anything else.
> 
> strategy? -  upgrade on top of woody to sarge?

Ding!  For ease and simplicity, that'd be the way to go.

> * start clean?

Not necessary with Debian.  I know people who've upgraded three major
releases now while never doing a reinstall.  A well-maintained Debian
system does not accumulate a lot of cruft, so there's not generally a
reason to do a clean install.  "Well maintained" in this instance does
mean trying to (or at least being aware of) the Debian Way when managing
your systems.

> * start clean & switch distro to Fedora or something else?

Ewww.  Fedora is not the way to go for a secure system, and
most certainly not for a stable one.  Upgrading to a highly secure OS,
such as OpenBSD would be an option, but as easy as a Debian upgrades are,
it would be hard to recommend an OS change.  I would stick with
Sarge/Stable for now.  Although there are now security sources for
testing/Etch, it's not a proven process yet.

So, here's what you'd do to get that box to Sarge:
## make your box current with Woody first. (this is important)
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

##change your /etc/apt/sources.list from woody to sarge
apt-get update
apt-get install apt #probably not necessary to do this as a separate
step, but it doesn't hurt.  This will pull in lots of dependencies,
don;t be alarmed.

##pull in all the new stuff
apt-get dist-upgrade
#wait.

You will have some questions to answer in regards to config files, in
which case 'D' to show the diffs comes in handy.  If the upgrade process
is allowed to install a newer config file, it will keep the old one
around as configfile.dpkg-old


-troy




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